by HKURBEX
An assortment of corroding tools and unused medical equipment sit gathering dust at a medical facility which once carried out 60 per cent of all abortions in Hong Kong.
Once one of Hong Kong’s most affordable providers of cheap private care, this medical facility has now been left to rot after it closed down in 2012 following a dispute over rent.
In an attempt to help doctors fleeing the mainland, the Anglican Church provided the land to set up the hospital in 1966 allowing practitioners from over the border to continue practising.
For the next 46 years, the multi-floored medical facility provided low-cost health services to Hongkongers who would struggle to afford private care elsewhere.
At its prime, 6,000 abortions were performed a year here, making it the largest provider of childbirth terminations in the city. This all came to an end when a dispute over the tenancy broke out in 2009. Hospital bosses were informed that they would have to make way for an HK$800 million museum and gallery. It has still yet to materialise.
Although the church denied suggestions that the abortion services were part of the motive for the redevelopment, the hospital did expose the inadequacy of pregnancy termination services and sex education in the city.
The 80-bed hospital also performed outpatient procedures and surgery, and after the court ruling ordered them to shut their doors they had to sell most of the medical equipment. What they could not flog now lies scattered across the dark vacant spaces of the building, eroding silently in desolation.
by HKURBEX – Visual creators and storytellers on a mission to unearth Hong Kong’s derelict abandoned sites.
